Michael Dukakis

By ROGER SIMON and ROGER SIMON,Roger Simon is a nationally syndicated columnist for The Sun. This excerpt is from his new book, "Road Show," published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Copyright 1990 by Roger Simon. Reprinted with permission | November 11, 1990

"By the time we're finished, they're going to wonder whether Willie Horton is Dukakis' running mate."--Lee AtwaterHe was big. He was black. He was every guy you ever crossed street to avoid, every pair of smoldering eyes you ever looked away from on the bus or subway. He was every person you moved out of the city to escape, every sound in the night that made you get up and check the locks on the windows and grab the door handles and give them an extra tug.Whether you were white or black or red or yellow, Willie Horton was your worst nightmare.

One of the best features of our quadrennial presidential campaigns is the series of debates between the major party nominees, plus another between their running mates. Voters tune in by the millions and get a better look at them than they might at any number of staged political events, whether run by the parties or by news-media sponsors. On the theory that if it's not broken, don't fix it, for the last six cycles the debates have been organized and conducted by a bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates.

Sen. Tom Harkin says the fact that he got 79 percent of the vote in Iowa's Democratic caucus shows that the people who know him best give him strong support. His opponents' supporters say the fact that only 25,000-30,000 Democrats turned out, compared to 126,000 four years ago, shows that he has no drawing power. They're both wrong. Iowa proved nothing, as usual. At this stage of the campaign, primaries are the only way to measure candidates' true strength. It is worth remembering that in 1988, George Bush came in third in the Iowa Republican caucus, and Michael Dukakis came in third in the Iowa Democratic caucus.

WASHINGTON -- The latest evidence that the Democratic Party is a glutton for punishment is its decision to select Boston -- that bastion of liberalism, Edward Kennedy and Michael Dukakis -- as the site of its 2004 national convention. Coupled with the election of Rep. Nancy Pelosi, San Francisco liberal, as the party's new leader in the House, you can hear the Republican Party warming up its old liberal-bashing machine that has served it so well in the post-New Deal years. The choices of both Boston and Ms. Pelosi are excellent in terms of their backgrounds and politics in representing the rich tradition of the Democratic Party.

DEMOCRATS who think Mario Cuomo is the candidate they have been waiting for to take back the White House are in for a real surprise. Cuomo offers voters the same thing GeorgeMcGovern, Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis offered them: warmed-over New Deal liberalism, albeit in a more attractive package. In fact, Cuomo may be the weakest Democrat the party could field.Granted, the New York governor is probably the most oratorically gifted politician in either party today. He is talented, cunning, fearless and has stature.

WASHINGTON -- Politics is an imitative business. Four years ago George Bush won the presidency by convincing voters he was not Michael S. Dukakis. Bill Clinton is following exactly the same strategy this year.That is the message the Democratic presidential nominee has been sending so insistently in the two weeks since the convention: I am not Michael Dukakis.In 1988, Dukakis left his convention for a brief foray into Texas with his vice presidential nominee, Lloyd Bentsen, and then retired to the bucolic pleasures of western Massachusetts and the heavy burdens of state government.

THE FOLLOWING editorial appeared Saturday, Feb. 22 in the New York Times:Voters in the New Hampshire primary election seemed determined to repeal two long-valid laws of presidential politics.Democrats challenged Lippman's Law, named for one of its prominent promulgators, Theo Lippman Jr. of The Baltimore Sun. It holds that:The parties usually nominate for president only people who have been plausible candidates in prior campaigns.Of the last 28 nominees, only four did not conform: Wendell Willkie in 1940, Michael Dukakis in 1988 and both Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford in 1976.

Boston. -- The office of Prof. Michael Dukakis at Northeastern University is neat as a pin. With its exposed brick wall, cleandesk top, utilitarian book shelves and computer, the decor is more Spartan than Oval.Four mornings a week, the former governor, former presidential nominee walks the two miles from his home to this streetcar university in Boston. He comes to teach classes named ''Public Policy,'' ''State and Local Government,'' and, of course, ''The American Presidency.''Anyone desperately seeking pathos in a political portfolio could pick it out of that course description.

LOS ANGELES -- Just after the speech ends, just after Bil Clinton's "thang-kyew, thang-kyews" fade from the air, the game begins:The reporters lean down from the camera platform or lean over the ropes that are patrolled by the Secret Service and begin to shout."

County Democrats will look ahead to the presidential contest tomorrow when they gather for their annual Jefferson-Jackson Dinner.It'sa good thing, because the local election last year was their worst in memory, as Republicans seized the county executive spot and their first County Council seats in two decades."

The days are shorter. The crowds are smaller. The story is sliding off Page One faster than the Titanic slipping beneath the waves. You could be Mike Hargrove. You could be Mike Dukakis. Bobby Valentine or Bob Dole. There's not a heck of a lot of difference between the two, say the scribes on the bus. "When you're covering a bad, bad team and you're 400 games behind first place, ... it's like covering Harold Stassen," explains The Tampa Tribune's Joe Henderson. "But you still have to show up."

ST. LOUIS -- On his third try, Al Gore finally got it right. In the first debate, he was too much. In the second, bent on making up for being too much in the first one, he wasn't enough. In the third one, he displayed his superior ability to explain his own positions and punch holes in his opponent's without being too overbearing. On this scorecard at least, George W. Bush was left reeling. Mr. Gore, in fact, later compared the three debates to the Goldilocks story -- too hot, too cold and just right.

WASHINGTON -- If there is a single issue with the potential to define the new relationship between President Clinton and the Republican majority in Congress, it is welfare reform. It could be revealing.Clinton used the welfare issue to define himself as a "new Democrat" -- as opposed to another liberal in the tradition of Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis -- to win the presidency in 1992. Working-class Democrats approved when he talked about ending welfare as we know it" and requiring "responsibility" on the part of recipients.

''You just can't grasp what it's like to live your life with someone telling you where you can or can't go -- what it's like not to have the simple freedom to do what you want, when you want, to go wherever you want. I'm 37 years old, and I grew up knowing nothing but East Germany and knowing I would never know anything else of the world. When I stood in front of the Wall that night, I cried like a baby. I couldn't stop. My dream, my real fantasy, is to go to America. I want to water-ski in Florida.

Washington. -- How surprised I was to hear that the same hive of conservative legal thinkers who brought down the nomination of Lani Guinier to be President Clinton's civil-rights enforcement chief was gathering its swarm to sting her long-awaited successor, Deval L. Patrick.Barring any embarrassing skeletons, Mr. Patrick would seem to be the perfect nominee, personally, professionally and politically.Personally, he has an inspiring poverty-to-prominence success story. A 37-year-old product of one of Chicago's poorest South Side neighborhoods, he earned a scholarship to exclusive Milton Academy through ''A Better Chance,'' a program that sends bright, promising ghetto kids to exclusive Eastern prep schools.

Political campaigns that are in trouble abound in sweet talk in public and bitter ironies in private.Here are some of the ironies that the George Bush campaign has been kicking around recently:Once upon a time, George Bush was a brilliant debater. In 1988, Bush won those two debates with Michael Dukakis, didn't he?Well, not really. When you go back and look at the videotapes of the 1988 debates you realize that Bush was not that hot a debater.He looked, in fact, no different than he looked in the debates of 1992.

The first inning in the presidential campaign is still two and a half weeks away, but it is not too early for Democratic National Chairman Ron Brown to alert the bullpen. His starters are not looking too sharp warming up.Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, the front runner, has multiple problems. There is the will-not-die story of his extra-marital affairs. There is the attack on him for ethnic insensitivity by New York Gov. Mario Cuomo and some other Italian-Americans. The Sun's Paul West reports from Washington that "worries about Mr. Clinton's electability are helping fuel speculation that some other prominent figure may yet join the race."

He may have pretty much spared bankers in view of the night's purpose, but political satirist Mark Russell could hardly be expected to resist another tempting target in his Monday night appearance in Baltimore on behalf of Maryland Public Television.After saying hello to State Comptroller Louis L. Goldstein, who was in the Omni Hotel audience, Russell noted Governor William Donald Schaefer could not be there, "because he's dedicating an outhouse over in Salisbury."Actually, said Russell, Schaefer's recent vulgarity which irritated the Eastern Shore was a long overdue gaffe and could not compare to the material some of Maryland's other recent governors have provided the humor trade.

As primordial programming leads migratory birds safely home, the impulse to pass out walk-around money has led Democrats to victory in Baltimore.The weather gets nippy, the days get short and the faithful feel a pang, a certainty that $25 or $50 is coming their way once again.Turned out in vast numbers by money and love of the democratic process, Baltimore clubs called Stonewall, Trenton, Proven, United and East End piled up margins that rendered irrelevant the performance of opponents elsewhere in Maryland.

LOS ANGELES -- Just after the speech ends, just after Bil Clinton's "thang-kyew, thang-kyews" fade from the air, the game begins:The reporters lean down from the camera platform or lean over the ropes that are patrolled by the Secret Service and begin to shout."